Witnessing abuse of children

[PosieParker]

I've been reading a fair few threads recently about adults who witness parents being vile to children and do nothing about it. I have on a number of occasions phoned the police when children/babies don't have car seats, reported a woman who smacked, what looked like, her granddaughter and shoved here in a van with no seats, confronted a woman that threatened to smack her dds face (she was uber rough and the little girl was about six) she also threatened the little girl with her father when she got home, the list goes on. I have never been hit although threatened.

Am I unreasonable to think it's just me who speaks out?

Riven Fri 30-Jul-10 16:05:29
I see poeple have mentioned a 'snapshot' (I had to go fetch dd)
I mentioned dd and lacl of car seat because it ws an emergency situation (has happenend a few times) but if Posie had seen it she would have assumed abuse and neglect and I would have oh so enjoyed the police coming over.
But it was a snapshot. Posie would judge not knowing it was an emergency and caused major damage.

Riven it is not against the law to take a child in a car without a car seat in an emergency and so the Police would have been satisfied with your explanation. Why would a Police officer turning up be cause of damage? Would you rather noone gave a shit about your DD and her welfare had you ever been reported? If SS turned up here because someone had seen me go mad at one of my dcs in the street I would be worried about my behaviour and how it's viewed and I would be pleased that someone cared enough to call.

I am still undecided about 'confronting' and will always make myself visible (often think of the ad with Patsy Palmer where everyone stepped forward and looked at the criminal activity instead of ignoring it). Just phoned my local station again after a woman staggered out of a pub with two friends and a child and got into a car and drove off, perhaps I should have ignored it? I explained to the Police that I had no idea whether or not she had been drinking she could have had a disability and the operator said they would rather check.

I am struggling to think

I think you would be right to report something you thought was worrying, but wrong to directly intervene.

A few years ago my DS had an op which meant he had a catheter fitted for a fortnight. My life had to continue for these two weeks but he found having his nappy changed very painful.

I will never forget holding my DS down in the baby changing room of our local Tesco, trying to change a dirty nappy for a clean one while he screamed and cried. This was made even worse on leaving the room as a woman stood waiting for me and informed me that 'I shouldnt have had children and didnt deserve to keep him if he was so sore that he screamed in pain while having his nappy changed'. I left the store in tears. This woman like PP probably thought she could read the situation. She was wrong. And my DS's life was definitely not made better, even though he wasnt being abused.

Sorry last sentence was an accident.

I have intervened a few times when I thought a child was in a dangerous situation.
A man was shouting at a little boy in a bus depot he was about 4yrs old.He pushed him to the floor and then started kicking him.I looked around and nobody was doing anything. So I shouted at him to stop because he was hurting him.He told me to f off but he did stop.I never reported him,didnt know who he was and he just got on a bus and went.
I think that if it had been a puppy or kitten perhaps someone may have intervened or maybe not.
Was I wrong to interfere?

A more disapproving society, where people are encouraged to report one another to the authorities for the even the most fanciful of concerns, but never to get personally involved?

Yes, that is the kind of place I want my children to grow up.

No jaffa you were not wrong to intervene, although from what you describe I think ideally I would have looked for a security guard to restrain the man, and I would definitely have called the police to report it.

However just because it is sometimes right to intervene or report doesn't mean it always is. The idea that a parent should welcome being reported by ignorant passers-by because it shows somebody cares is diseased thinking.

Someone who goes around reporting things they know nothing about are doing it because it makes them feel important to pursue a righteous crusade on behalf of the helpless. They are social poison.

The general mumsnet consensus that there is no downside to reporting is really fucking stupid.

But it would be good to try to stop children being hurt when you can see it happening. If people would just say something then perhaps the child could be saved from pain at that time.Unfortunately we now live in a society where behaviour isnt checked.

When a child dies in awful circumstances I wonder why didnt the neighbours do something or other friends or family members. Its always blamed on the social workers for bad handling of the case but doesnt society as a whole have a responsibilty to look out for and protect the vulnerable. Or shall we all turn a blind eye ?

PP - words almost fail me... almost.

You have just reported a woman coming out of a pub - you have no idea if she had been drinking.

You are indeed a busy body - you can glam it up all you like, but the bottom line is that you are getting a thrill out of feeling superior to all of these people you are reporting.

IF you mean well - then READ this thread and listen to what people are telling you.

Stay Frosty has, i think, made a really good point - how would Jeremy Kyle fill his shows if some people weren't completely shameless about their behaviour, and also selfish - focussed on their needs above all else. Unfortunately, that filters down to their parenting style - swear words, threats (idle or otherwise) - I don't think the op's examples are unusual, but they are so commonplace it would be hard to call them reportable.

"ust phoned my local station again after a woman staggered out of a pub with two friends and a child and got into a car and drove off,

!!!!!
posieparker = nosey parker!

cone on !!!!

"Unfortunately we now live in a society where behaviour isnt checked."

Do we?

How so?

When I go about my day the world appears to run quite well with an extraordinary degree of human co-ordination. I don't think that would be possible in a society where behaviour wasn't checked.

You're talking about the UK - the best queueing nation in the world, one of the only places on earth where the default way of using an escalator is considerate of those who want to get past you, where drivers know how to signal their intentions and actually bother to do it.

This is a generally safe and pleasant country and most children are brought up happily by (necessarily flawed) parents who love them.

Sure, shit things happen to children and we must, as a society, figure out how to address that and stop it happening. But we will NEVER eradicate it.

Making our society a suspicious one that sets the interests of children against the interests of their parents and involves authority figures to tell law-abiding people how to live our lives, doesn't seem to me to be a healthy development for children at all.

People who are obsessed with protecting children are just one step up from people who are obsessed with protecting "unborn children". Finding yourself a nice helpless, voiceless set of victims to crusade on behalf of is a domineering impulse, not a caring one.

but nowadays i think there is a significant amount of people who feel no guilt or shame about - well, anything much

Actually i'd say it's quite the opposite, i got regularly wacked around the head by both parents in public growing up, nobody would dream of doing that know, a smack on the legs in front of the wrong person you'd be off to the local cop shop.

oh ffs porcamiseria you are quite ridiculous, a woman getting into a car drunk is a danger to her kids and to everyone else on the road. If she's not drunk, no harm done, she spends 10 minutes doing a breathalyser, but if she runs me over and kills me when I'm riding my bike home, my children have no father.

Some people are quite ridiculous - drunk people getting into cars are fucking dangerous, and it's not 'nosey' to call the police if you see someone who appears to be drunk.

I think we all have a duty to consider the vulnerable and intervene where necessary. We are society and we should stand up for its values and laws.

However it is ILLEGAL to pose as a Social Workerv

Agree with SomeGuy on the drink driving thing.

which law would that be wahwah?

skidoodly yes we do have an order to our society in some ways,yes we queue but also alot of the time people look the other way,
probably for their own safety. We need to find a balance between being nosey and being a protective influence.

I would have thought that when it comes to apparently drunken people in charge of two tonnes of death-causing metal, then the balance would always be on the side of protection.

Safest thing then is to report anyone at all getting in a car since perhaps they are drunk and it doesn't show at all.

Can't go wrong with reporting anything and everything right?

There are times when reporting something that is clearly a crime makes sense. For the other times.. get a hobby ffs.

Sure jaffa but that balance is not reporting everything you see that could be worrying, as has been advised on MN many times.

Sometimes looking the other way is the right thing to do. Sometimes getting involved and helping is right and sometimes a situation (such as pagwatch described earlier) demands specialist intervention.

ah:

'
If a person who is not registered as a social worker in any relevant register with intent to deceive another? .

(a) takes or uses the title of social worker; .
(b) takes or uses any title or description implying that he is so registered, or in any way holds himself out as so registered, .

he is guilty of an offence.
'

I did not pretend to be a social worker until the woman asked me how I would know who she was....I said that I was a social worker and that we could find out..... Nothing prior to that had implied that I was one. I obtained no information from her and did not deceive her as it made no difference. I simply added it on, I know not to next time.

Of course it's very unMN to admit that this woman was very rough, with her rough friend swearing a lot, ignoring the children except to frighten the crap out of the little girl.

The woman staggered out of the pub...should I have assumed she hasn't been drinking? Is there a single poster on this board that hasn't been affected by a drink driver?

Seriously this is very infrequent, it's not everyday you see something that even hits your radar but when I do I do something about it. If I just mentioned the two times this year would everyone be going so mad?

The OP will be reporting herself to the police for that offence no doubt.

I am not obsessed from protecting children, and I am very much pro choice. I do get fucked off when I see children without carseats or parents smoking in cars. It's not a big deal, half the time I can't do anything.